How Not Speaking German Has Helped Me In Austria

After a few days rain Vienna has run into another stretch of beautiful days. After class on Saturday we had a nice lunch in the park on the grass. And in keeping with that motif we went to MuseumsQuartier that night and had a few drinks on the steps of the MuMoK (but not before going to see the new Indiana Jones!). It was quite nice and the fact that it was cheap didn't hurt either. What did hurt was when I hit a security guard in the face with a frisbee.
ya.
We were tossing the disc around while walking out of MQ. As we were passing under the main archway we stopped and waited for someone to come back from the bathroom. I'd say its about 20 feet wide but the catch is there are columns that break up the space. Here we must pause to make clear a crucial fact. When a group of people who like to play frisbee are in possession of a disc, there is no restriction, physical cultural or otherwise, that will stop them from throwing said disc around.
So there we were throwing around in a confined space. It was great. Weaving in and out of columns. Dodging passer-bys, some of whom even got in on the action. There was one passer-by who was not so keen on the game though. Some security guard-esque man had grumbled something at us but not really done much before he just walked away so we continued on. At one point Josh cut behind a pillar so I stepped to the left and threw the disc where he should have been had his path and speed remained consistent. But where he should have been was not where he was. It was where the guard was.
The guard had cut infront of Josh presumably to tell him to stop running around, but I didn't see that. So when I threw the disc to "josh" i really threw it to the security guard, more precisely, to his nose. square in the nose. BAM.
Needless to say he was not thrilled and stormed towards me demanding my Identification. I got that much. Its not hard to understand someone yelling NAME NAME NAME NAME NAME at you, or rather, its german equivalent. But then he went on talking very quickly and very angerly. Matt says he heard something about having to pay, but i missed that. All I could say was excuse me repeatedly and then I finally had to bust out the old standard, I don't speak German. Perhaps my most used German phrase after, a coffee please. He seemed doubtful but eventually the dumb founded look on my face convinced him I was telling the truth. In the end, he just told us to leave. And we did, with haste.
Having learned our lesson we then proceeded to play catch over the Ringstrasse, central Vienna's main traffic artery, on the walk back to the UBahn. I mean we were outside so I don't see how that could have been a problem. I also want to clarify that I was not in the slightest bit drunk.
I'm still a little shocked.

I Need a Haircut!

The title more or less says it all. I got my hair cut the shortest its been since I let a high school teacher buzz my head on a bet (yeah i know it was stupid), but for me that doesn't really mean it was objectively short. I figured I'd could either ride out the semester or get a haircut here if need be. I was leaning towards the former because of my fierce loyalty to Laura (the woman who cuts my hair) but that lean turned into a definitive stance when I saw the hair styles this mystical land had to offer. Most of them are strange combinations of mohawks and mullets and I know, I know, that going abroad is about experiencing new things, but not that. I haven't got much time left here so I'll probably grit my teeth and bear it, but I'm starting to look like my good buddy Ralph so we shall see.


Ralph

Devendra Banhart -- Long Haired Child

i can't put up the music now for some reason or another but i'll try it again later.

Bonjour! Je voudrais ein wasser bitte. Danke.

Upon my return from 4 days in Paris I'm am confronted with a blogger's dilemma. To write a simple summary of the things I did over the course of those days would consume a lot of time and effort for a final result that would not be a particularly engaging read. But I can't just not write about Paris if I hope to continue this blog throughout the rest of my time abroad. There can be no art that doesn't take Paris into account. Quite the conundrum.
So then, the news in brief(ish).

Pianos in the Bathroom: A business associate of my parents recommended that during my visit I find an old friend of hers who rents rooms in her house to weary travelers. The business associate spent two years living in Paris and for those two years rented a room in the very same place. As a place in the middle of the 7th Arr. I expected a pretty big apartment with an extra bedroom. What I found, set back from the street about 30 yards, was a three floor house with a private garden and huge bedrooms for a temporary guests such as my self as well as three long term guests. In some ways it was an exercise in compromise. To get a huge bedroom I had to defend my bed from cats who thought themselves more entitled. To use my big private bathroom, complete with out of tune upright piano, I had to step over a line of ants dutifully working. Overall though it was a fantastic place. The private garden, the central location blocks away from the likes of Musee D'Orsay, and most of all, the incredible hospitality of my host could not be beat.

A Linguistic Reawakening: After about two hours of talking to strangers in Frallemand, or Franzödeutsche if you prefer, my faltering high school french skills came back and I was able conduct almost all cursory interactions exclusively in French. The most emblematic anecdote of my french usage came when I asked an older man for directions in french. He responded in a detailed manner also in french. Then again, in french, what I can only assume was his wife pulled him aside and asked him if he thought I understood. Not only did I understand the directions but I understood her doubt. I could get by fairly well, but nonetheless my french was not good enough to inspire much confidence in my conversational partners.

Tourist Extraordinaire: I hit most of the major sites (the centre Pompidou among my favorite heavy hitters of the trip), at least from the outside, and with the help of some people I know currently studying in Paris, I also saw a few things I'd never seen before. The Marais was one of the new areas we explored and it featured some of the best dressed orthodox jews I've ever seen. They waved good bye to the black suit/white shirt uniform long ago, but I'd expect nothing less of Paris. One of the most effective, not to mention cheap, ways to see a city in my mind is by walking around, and I spent a lot, like a lot a lot, of time wearing down the soles of my shoes. The fact that I'd be out for 14+ hours at a time also didn't hurt.

The Greatest Pizza in the World: Seriously. Its the greatest pizza I've ever had in my life. And I refused to leave Paris with having some again. And for you pizza purist know this, its not run by frenchmen. Its called Pizzaria Positano. The address is 15 Rue des Canettes. The phone number is 01 43 26 01 62. They're closed on sundays. They don't take reservations so be prepared to wait because I, and now you, are not the only people who know how amazing the food is there. Every time my parent and I are in Paris we wander the general neighborhood looking for this restaurant with success coming only after about an hour's delay caused by walking down the wrong street. It is a little tough to find but once I did I made sure to grab a stack of business cards so now I have proof of this place's existence that exists outside my imagination. Victory!

Paris into the Future: I'm thinking of going back and bumming around for a few weeks to a month after I graduate but I suppose that depends on what I end up doing with my life in the ever approaching future. But lets not talk about that quite yet.

Lost In Translation

Throughout this semester, whenever I've been placed in a non-german speaking City (namely Prague and Budapest) its really highlighted just how functional I've become in alt Wien. I can order coffee like champ and I've even help a few lost souls find their way through the subway system, albeit with broken sentences and superfluous hand gestures. Perhaps I've gotten cocky of late because the universe saw fit to knock me down a language peg or two.



The end of last week was characterized by some Parisian visitors which Matt John and I spent a good amount of time taking to our favorite places to drink, eat and well drink some more. Sidenote: most of my time outside my room is spent with coffee in hand. One night on the way to our favorite/only Indian restaurant we emerged to be confronted by the dreaded u-bahn ticket checkers. While their threat is omnipresent, I've only had to show my ticket 3 times since I got here.

With my monthly ticket in hand and a friendly smile I approached the woman who had stopped us. She took my ticket, returned the smile and asked me a question I thought I understood. I said "No, not this night" in response and her smile disappeared faster than I realized facial muscles could move. I then gleaned that her response was something along the lines of "then I can't let you through".

This boggled my mind. See, the question I thought she asked me was "are you going out drinking tonight?" I was with 7 other people my age and I thought she was making friendly, though admittedly awkward, small talk. WRONG. She actually asked me for my student ID proving I had the right to use a student's semester u-bahn pass. The problem of the words I know for ID related things, I didn't hear any of them. I heard Trinken, to drink. So when I said no, I was essentially admitted to trying to cheat Vienna's dear old subway system. I eventually figured out what it was she really asked, showed her my school ID and continued through. Fortunately (for me at least) those traveling with me had much larger problems with their subway tickets meaning no one witnessed me make a fool of myself first hand. Still, I thought it was too funny to hide from the world.

A search of my ITunes library has yielded...

John Coltrane's Blue Train (we actually came off the orange line but disregard that)

and

M.Ward's (again i know) Chinese Translation

stay tuned for the beginning of a series highlighting some of vienna's fine establishments.

Disaster has Struck

I lost my previously mentioned bouncy ball.

It was a good ball that was taken before its time. may it rest in peace.

i only have the itunes purchases version of the song so i can't share it with you all but i WAS going to post M.Ward's Sad, Sad, Song from Transfigurations of Vincent. you could probably find it on the interweb.

The Greatest Euro Ever Spent

With the current state of the american economy spending money around these parts is never an event with out consideration (though i find that when i spend money of booze increasingly less consideration goes into the money i spend on the next drink or end of night falafel, but i digress; and relax mom, i'm fine). but two days ago on the way back from the supermarket i made perhaps the most rewarding impulse buy to date. I spent one euro in one of those gumball type machines but instead of bad gum that got too rubbery and lost all flavor in mere seconds I got a bouncy ball! It has already provided hours of entertainment and will continue to do so for a good long while.
no music today but instead videos.

This is what happens when you combine 250000 bouncy balls and a lovely san francisco afternoon.



and this is a cool making-of video for the above ad.

Its been two days since I've worn socks.

Three days ago a terrible thing happened. I reached into my hamper to grab a pair of socks (I don't always get around to sorting and folding my socks after I do laundry because I hate it). As I donned my foot coverings I realized that this was my last pair of socks. I had to do laundry again. damn it. Whats worse it highlighted the loss of half of my favorite pair of socks a few weeks ago, because if only i had those red and gray socks I could have made it another day.
if you've been keeping up on the Vienna blog circuit you already know that doing laundry here is a rather hellacious misadventure. Well recently things have gotten worse. For about two weeks there was only one laundry machine, which was bad but not awful because the cycle is only about 30 minutes long. Then one evening laundry room attendees were greeted with the triumphant return of the second washing machine. HUZZAH!
But just when things were looking up they got so much worse. Soon the second dryer had a sign that simply read, scrawled in pencil, "KAPUTT!" What makes this so bad is the dryer cycle here is 90 minutes and even after that your clothes still aren't dry; they're really just hot enough that the water will evaporate when you take it out of the dryer, if you're lucky. Come to think of it, its more a sauna then a dryer. Well as you may have gleaned from the title, I did not do laundry due to unavoidable delays (read: my favorite Irish pub in vienna) and have been wearing my Chucks with out socks. As a result I live in a constant state of fear that my shoes and feet will smell bad. They don't for now so I'm safe but my fear has led me to frequently remove my shoes in public.
Laundry day is tomorrow because I've run out of more than just socks now. Wish me luck.

Ryan Adams Talking about Smelly Socks before going into "Easy Plateau" during a show in, I think, Scotland.